Wrangler Dani

I was challenged today in my writer’s group to write for five minutes about my “hobby horse” – the thing that I enjoy that grounds my little writerly soul. For me, it’s cooking, and here’s why:

Cooking is eccentric, rather like writing, I guess. I get an idea in my mind – a great pasta sauce or a soup base or a new marinade for the chicken I just bought. Sometimes it comes from a magazine or a cooking show or one of my many proudly-displayed, much-fingered cookbooks – sometimes it just pops into my head or springs forth singing from a jar of marmalade in the pantry or the way a noodle curls around my fork at a restaurant. I think about it for a day or two, usually, letting it seep into my mind and make its way to my heart. I think about making it for someone I love, of the “mmmmmm” that will follow if I succeed. I go to the grocery store, or I shop my pantry, looking for something beautiful, something that will make this dish special – stewed plum tomatoes or cheese-stuffed olives, fresh kale that falls joyfully out of the brown paper sack I buy it in, as if it too knows that inspiration awaits.

Lest all of this thinking and waiting and preparing lead you to believe that I am a thoughtful, organized and quiet cook, let me release you from that assumption. Once I decide that “today’s the day” for my new creation, the kitchen starts to hum with its own life. I always use too many pots and I clatter about as if noise alone made successful dinners. I endlessly wipe the counters and they endlessly become spattered again as I toss and spread and stir and fry and mix.

There’s a goofy sign often seen at overpriced touristy stores that says something like: “I like to cook with wine, sometimes I put it in the food” and I find it kitschy and awful and true, all at once. It’s thrilling to pour myself a glass in the midst of the whirlwind of the kitchen, a small reminder that this is, after all, going to be a meal to be savored.

Often, I listen to bluegrass music while I cook, and, although I hadn’t thought about this until just now, I think that I’m wooed by the simplicity of bluegrass lyrics in conjunction with a simple pastime. Songs like “Sadie’s Got Her New Dress On” ring proudly of barn-raises and square dances, of days when Mama made Sunday dinner and Daddy put the fear of God in lovesick young men. It’s the perfect anthem for something as rudimentary but beautiful as cooking a new recipe for people we care for.

After I’ve made a mess of my kitchen and sipped my wine and sang into my ladle, it’s ready. It’s a braised pork chop or pumpkin chili or pasta carbonara. It’s a love letter to my husband, a belief in the goodness of today and the sweetness of the next bite, the idea that life should be savored instead of gulped, shared rather than saved. Through the tang of fresh parmesan, the simmering of a curry, the juicing of a lemon, I am renewed and reminded of all that I’m grateful for, and moved to love.